David Lockhart-Hawkins is SDN’s compliance specialist, having worked with hundreds of apprenticeship providers to develop robust approaches to funding, compliance and quality.
Here, David shares his top compliance insights from the last month:
Minimum Wage increase
“Applying from 1st April 2024 the apprenticeship minimum wage will increase to £6.40 an hour, up 21.2%. Be sure to update your relevant business development materials, terms and conditions in the training plan, contract for services templates where you state specific values.”
Financial statements
“A reminder was posted that as per financial health guidance, independent training providers need to submit their financial statements to the ESFA no later than by the end of the ninth month of their period end. Follow the link below for full details, though no confirmation of to whom you should actually send them, so maybe ask the helpdesk.”
Submission of financial statements
Recognition of Prior Learning
“New apprenticeship service questions will start appearing from 30th November. If you use a file upload template you’ll need to use Version 7.”
More on this here – Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) changes
Autumn statement
“Not much ended up appeared in the Autumn statement apart from a new £50m pilot outline for stimulating interest in engineering “and other key growth areas” with not much detail revealed. We should expect more from DfE in due course.”
Compliance CPD and tailored support
Join David on his regular CPD sessions on funding and compliance to help you move from theory to practice (we host these as in-house sessions too) – we give you practical examples and resources, explore solutions and help you put a plan in place to implement what you have learnt. Take a look at our events page to see what’s available.
David works with organisations one-to-one to help develop robust compliance strategies and prepare for audit, working with our quality and inspection team too. To learn more about our tailored consultancy and to see what help we can give you, get in touch via our contact page.
Keep an eye out for more insights from David on our blog page.